Tony, I just spoke with Lorin. She thinks my replacement top is one piece, but there won't be any more one piece tops, even special order, because the quarry has to pick out large slabs with lots of talc and was going deeper and deeper to find suitable stone...just too costly to try to find good stone for this purpose, and even some of what they thought was perfect wasn't good enough for this application. The new top design, which will be retrofitted for anyone with an original top that cracks, is a cast iron recessed top with three pieces of soapstone sitting in it, The center one will have the PH tab, so can be lifted out with that. Woodstock is designing a tool to help remove the other two slabs. There is also a small retaining lip, so one can open the top with at least one slab in place...I'm not too clear on that. But to clean the combuster, one will have to remove the slabs prior to opening the top. One can remove one or more slabs for cooking directly on the cast iron, which will certianly give a different rate of transfer and different type of cooking than on the soapstone...hotter faster more like a conventional stovetop, and probably hotter absolutely. One has the option of cooking directly on the soapstone still, and the soapstone will be level as it is on the PH, not have raised areas like on the Fireview. They don't believe the weight of cooking has been nor will be any issue on the original large stones. They believe it is thermal expansion with the size of this slab that is causing the cracks. Some people with the cracks have burned with the crack visable (I have always has mine covered, first because I didn't know it was there and had it covered for cooking, then to prevent smoke entry into the room...), and they have observed that the crack opens as the stove cools, and shuts as the stove heats up.
On a separate front, as of today Woodstock is now using a loose piece of gasketing, which rolls out with the combuster as you remove it for cleaning, to tighten up the seal and prevent smoke leakage around the combuster during burning. Apparently they have tortured their stove in their attemtps to stress but have themselves experienced no problem with the cat, haven't run into the very real problems you and others have experienced. But the SS cat does inherently expand and contract with heat far more than caramic. So this new gasketing snugs everything. I did ask Lorin if this new loose gasket would fall off when we remove the cats for cleaning and have the potential for falling somewhere and being hard to retrieve. She didn't know, because this is really new, so walked back and looked for one to try, then came across Ron who was at that moment installing and removing a cat to ckeck for just that issue and told her that it isn't a problem, it rolls right out on top of the cat. Even though I have had no problem to date, I have asked them to send me a piece of the gasketing.
They are exemplary in their responsiveness and courtesy toward their customers. So nice to experience.
